If you’re visiting Fruitlands Museum for the art and scenery, stop by the white "Elephant Oracle" near the entrance for comfort and wisdom. Resembling an imposing Parcheesi piece meditating in a field, the 8-foot cement and Styrofoam sculpture by Donna Dodson is one of the more visibly striking works in the 2013 Art in Nature Sculpture Show.

If you’re visiting Fruitlands Museum for the art and scenery, stop by the white "Elephant Oracle" near the entrance for comfort and wisdom.

Resembling an imposing Parcheesi piece meditating in a field, the 8-foot cement and Styrofoam sculpture by Donna Dodson is one of the more visibly striking works in the 2013 Art in Nature Sculpture Show.

Selected by a panel of three artists and curator Michael Volmar, this year’s exhibit features 12 fascinating works strategically placed around the grounds in ways that enhance visitors’ views of nature.

Volmar said the 90-acre site with open fields, gently sloping hills and forests provides "a perfect natural setting’’ for "art that responds to Fruitland’s diverse environment.’’

Working with panelists Linda Hoffman of Harvard, Murray Dewart of Brookline, and Andy Moerlein, last year’s artist-in-residence from Bow, N.H., he said they "selected sculptures that add a contemporary dimension for visitors to Fruitlands.’’

"We spent a lot of time selecting 10 artists whose work provides an interesting contrast that’s hopefully thought-provoking,’’ he said.

As the first outdoor sculpture most visitors will see, Dodson’s 2010 "Elephant Oracle" adds an intriguing dimension to roaming around the grounds.

A Wellesley College graduate now living in Jamaica Plain, Dodson said, "The 'Elephant Oracle' is the wise old one to whom we turn in times of confusion, doubt and indecision. The elephant has a memory that never forgets. Perhaps it is a paradox that one who knows so much says so little. Yet, in its presence, we find the courage in ourselves to listen.’’

Once works were selected, Volmar said he picked several possible sites out that seemed to suit suited particular works. Other placements involved "negotiations’’ with artists who had their own ideas about where to place their pieces.

Aiming for a "cool synergy,’’ he placed Geoff Nelson’s "Edge of the Wild’’ off to the side of the Art Museum "on the edge of the lawn where we mow the grass so it’ll look like a weird invasive plant.’’

Several placements seem especially intuitive.

Philip Marshall’s "Watching’’ transforms a grove of pear trees into a magical aviary on the museum’s boundary with a neighboring farm.

Born in East Kent, England and now based in Grafton, he’s installed five big blue "eyes’’ made from aluminum mesh painted with acrylic at different heights that seem to come alive when sunlight streams through them.

While Marshall told Volmar he’d been inspired by George Orwell’s novel "1984’’ about intrusive government, Richard Stein, a medical student visiting from Sitka, Alaska, said it reminded him on a "five-eyed bird perched in the branches.’’

Beside the farmhouse where "Little Women’’ author Louisa May Alcott spent time during her father’s failed Utopian venture, Alicia Dwyer’s five "Armor Dresses’’ stand guard as if waiting for future generations of women warriors.

When Dwyer, who lives in the village of Still River by Harvard, was selected, she asked to place the three "Armored Dresses’’ she had around the Fruitlands farmhouse.

But Volmar asked for a fourth sculpture so there’d be one for each of the Alcott sisters, Louisa, Anna, Abigail and Elizabeth.

"I really like that Alicia’s work responds not just to the place but to its sense of history. Her Armor Dresses are like spectral forms of the Alcott sisters,’’ he said.

Not far from the Shaker house where members of the religious sect once prophesized the Second Coming, Liz Fletcher’s skyward-gazing frog, titled "Prayer of Rana,’’ cups its webbed hands in its own benediction.

Visitors have to take a modest hike to view Gillian Christy’s "American Dreams’’ and Jim Sheehan’s "Cause and Effect’’ in a grassy field a few hundred yards from the Visitor’s Center.

Seeming about to topple, Christy’s 9-foot-tall work rises from the grass like a shaky skyscraper that, when viewed from the side, appears more precarious than when seen from the front.

The remotest work in the show, Sheehan’s minimalist work comprises a metal beam curved like a swan’s neck with a round gear fixed like an eye near its beak.

Upon a closer look, several works offer surprises that provide hints to their meaning.

Set in a field near the farmhouse, Scott Cunningham’s "Forge Flare’’ initially resembles a mobile comprised of abstract forms. But, Stein, the visiting medical student, noticed, it might be seen as a symbolic representation of the artist at his forge hammering out a new work.

Similarly, Cunningham’s "Orion’’ figuratively suggests the mythological hunter of Greek mythology and points to the spot where it rises in the night sky.

A furniture maker from Springfield, Peter Dellert constructed his towering "Inheritance’’ from furnace casings and auto parts that stand in stark contrast to the field where it’s placed. Resembling a metallic monolith that might be found in a post-apocalyptic Stonehenge, it bears in its center a red Plexiglas "eye’’ that glows in the sunlight.

At the season’s end, Volmar and the three panelists will select first, second and third place winners for the show and visitors are given a ballot to vote for their choices. Winners will receive a cash award.